Go to content Go to navigation

Quick Q and A with Jesse Milnes from The Sweetback Sisters
 by Kathy S-B  ·  5 December 2010

The Sweetback Sisters are one of the most talked about young string-based bands around these days. The sweet sister-like singing of Emily Miller and Zara Bode is accompanied by an extremely tight back-up band which includes the amazing fiddler from West Virginia, Jesse Milnes. The Sweetbacks put on a high-energy show filled with lots of opportunities to highlight their many musical talents.

Here’s a video of the band playing a Jesse original, “Be Back Home Soon.” While you’re on their website, check out more information about the band.

The Sweetback Sisters
One journalist referred to your music as “girl on girl harmonies with honky tonk melodies.” How would you describe the kind of music that the Sweetback Sisters play?
We play country, swing and honky-tonk . . . but basically the girls are just incredible singers, and we (the backup band) just try not to screw it up.
How did the name “Sweetback Sisters” come about?
When Zara and Emily were starting to sing together they needed a name and they found a page of hobo slang on the internet which included the term “Sweetback” and defined it as “someone just trying out the vagrant life” unfortunately no one else has ever heard that definition.
According to the band’s biography, many of the members of the band have a jazz background, how does this impact and influence your music?
Three of the four backup boys have jazz degrees. (I’m the odd man out.) Things can definitely get really jazzy, particularly when we’re in the fourth hour of a wedding gig and we’ve played everything we actually know. . . . On the other hand, everyone in the band has played a lot of different styles. Ross is a rocker at heart, Stefan grew up playing contra-dance music and singing shape-note songs, Peter has played everything from Classical to Bluegrass to Free Jazz. If anything I think the Jazz training makes us a little bit more willing to tackle some of the 50’s and 60’s era country songs that were really jazz heavy, or some western swing. Nobody freaks out when they hear a diminished chord. As the only person in the band who can’t read music I’ve learned a ton playing with these guys.
Speaking of influences, what musical icons would you say have inspired you the most?
Like I said, our individual influences are all over the map, but for the band I would mention these names: Roger Miller, the Davis Sisters, Patsy Cline, Bob Wills
You’ve had many terrific career highlights, but I imagine being on “Prairie Home Companion” was one of them. What was that experience like?
“A Prairie Home Companion” was a whirlwind. The show is live on the air, and the logistics behind it are incredible. The show we were on included six musical acts, plus the house band getting on and off stage multiple times in the space of an hour. My clearest memory is of standing backstage when the American Public Media theme came over the sound system and thinking “Oh my God, 4 million listeners.”
I understand you have a new CD coming out in 2011, how will it differ from the last one?
We’re just getting to work on the new CD, so it’s a blank page at this point, but I think it will have a lot more original material on it, and my hope is that it will have more of the energy of our live shows than “Chicken Ain’t Chicken” does.

Search

Subscribe via RSS

More Interviews

Lots more
interviews >

Published with Textpattern